The following words and terms, when used in this chapter, shall
have the following meanings unless the context clearly indicates otherwise.
(1) "Abandoned cemetery" means a non-perpetual care
cemetery containing one or more graves and possessing cemetery elements
for which no cemetery organization exists and which is not otherwise
maintained by any caretakers. It may or may not be recorded in deed
records of the county in which it lies.
(2) "Antiquities Permit" means a permit issued by the
Texas Historical Commission under the jurisdiction of the Antiquities
Code of Texas, Natural Resources Code ch. 191.
(3) "Atlas" means the Texas Historic Sites Atlas which
is a cultural resource database that is maintained by the Commission
and contains historic properties.
(4) "Burials" and "Burial pits" mean marked and unmarked
locales set aside for a human burial or burials purposes. Burials
and burial pits may contain the remains of one or more individuals
located in a common grave in a locale. The site area encompasses the
human remains present and also may contain gravestones, markers, containers,
coverings, garments, vessels, tools, and other grave objects which
may be present. or could be evidenced by the presence of depressions,
pit feature stains, or other archeological evidence.
(5) "Cemetery" means a place that is used or intended
to be used for interment, and includes a graveyard, burial park, unknown
cemetery, abandoned cemetery, mausoleum, or any other area containing
one or more graves or unidentified graves.
(6) "Commission" means the Texas Historical Commission.
(7) "Declaration of Dedication" means a notarized statement
submitted to the appropriate county clerk's office, in which the state
verifies and acknowledges that the named cemetery contains human burials
at least 50 years old.
(8) "Department" means the Texas Department of State
Health Services.
(9) "Disinterment Permit" means a permit issued by
the State Registrar that authorizes the exhumation of human remains
from a grave location.
(10) "Family cemetery" means a cemetery containing
members of a single family or kinship group, usually located on land
belonging to the family or occupied by the family when established.
(11) "Funerary objects" means physical objects associated
with a burial, such as a casket, whether whole or deteriorated into
pieces, personal effects, ceremonial objects, and any other objects
interred with human remains.
(12) "Grave" means a space of ground that contains
interred human remains or is in a burial park and this is used or
intended to be used for interment of human remains in the ground.
(13) "Identified grave" means a grave that is marked
with name of the individual interred in the grave or for which there
is other evidence of the name of the individual interred in the grave.
(14) "Interment" means the permanent disposition of
human remains by entombment, burial, or placement in a niche, but
does not include the location of displaced or disarticulated human
remains.
(15) "Historic cemetery" means a cemetery with at least
one grave that is 50 years old or older.
(16) "Human remains" means the body of a decedent.
(17) "Marked grave" means a grave that has some physical
object or objects identifying it as a grave, including a headstone,
wooden or metal marker, arrangement of field stones, plantings, or
other such indicia, whether or not the individual in the grave is
identified.
(18) "Nonperpetual care cemetery" means a cemetery
that is not a perpetual care cemetery.
(19) "Perpetual care" or "endowment care" means the
maintenance, repair, and care of all places in the cemetery.
(20) "Perpetual care cemetery" or "endowment care cemetery"
means a cemetery for the benefit of which a perpetual care trust fund
is established as provided by Chapter 712.
(21) "Physical anthropologist" means an individual
who has a graduate degree in anthropology or archaeology with a concentration
of study in the assessment of human skeletal remains. This person
must be qualified to obtain measurements of the skeleton and obtain
a biological profile, including sex, age, ancestry, stature, and anomalous
pathological and traumatic conditions.
(22) "Professional archeologist" means an individual
who has a degree in anthropology, archeology, or a closely related
field if that degree also included formal training in archeological
field methods, research, and site interpretation, and who conducts
archeological investigations as a vocation.
(23) "Unidentified grave" means a grave that is not
marked in a manner that provides the identity of the interment.
(24) "Unknown cemetery" means an abandoned cemetery
evidenced by the presence of marked or unmarked graves that does not
appear on a map or in deed records.
(25) "Unverified cemetery" means a location having
some evidence of human burial interments, but in which the presence
of one or more unmarked graves has not been verified by a person described
by §711.0105(a) of the Health and Safety Code of Texas or by
the commission.
(26) "Verified cemetery" means the location of a human
burial interment or interments as verified by the commission.
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